The Indian Express (Delhi Edition)
Champion or Choker? World will judge tonight — that’s not fair
TEAM INDIA hasn't won an ICC World Cup since 2011. South Africa's record is worse – they are yet to play a World Cup final. The teams historically disinclined towards winning big games, packed with players carrying painful so-near-yet-so-far memories, will meet at Barbados on Saturday. The unimaginative and the insensitive are calling the 2024 ICC T20 World final a Chokers Derby with redemption as the reward.
Fans in two continents, traumatised by previous World Cup heartbreaks, will have butterflies inside them charging like buffaloes. They have waited for the Cup to come home for far too long. But with hope, comes a rider. Success and failure at the storied Kensington Oval at Bridgetown, Barbados, will have overarching consequences. A win in the final, for either team, will wipe out the insulting tags and see an image makeover. A loss, meanwhile, would further chasten the team for being soft, underline old flaws and disillusion the fans more.
At around midnight this weekend, the world would have passed its brutal judgement -one team will be hailed as a Champion outfit, the other dismissed as chronic chokers. This name-calling is unfair and ironic.
So far in the tournament, neither India nor South Africa have cracked under pressure. They have been undefeated, closed out tight games, even if dramatically. In their respective semi-finals, both seem to have found ways to slay past demons.
“We've been very calm as a team,” India skipper Rohit Sharma would say after the team's 68-run win over England in the semis. “We do understand the occasion (of a final), but for us, it's important to keep calm and composed.”
South Africa captain Aiden Markram too takes pride in his team holding their nerves in tense games. “Chuffed to have got it over the line. A lot of our games have been really close,” he said after their last-four stage win, where South Africa pricked the Afghanistan bubble, dismissing them for 56 runs.
It's something that past South African squads with legendary names had failed to do. The rainbow nation's cricket history has been an Odyssey that has stayed true to the classic tragic narrative. Primitive rain rule tasking them with the farcical target of 22 runs in 1 ball in their first World Cup after return from isolation in 1992, the epic miscalculation of Duckworth & Lewis target in 2003, and the weather-curtailed last-over loss to New Zealand in 2015 are chapters of despair and missed chances. Though none as soul-shattering as the Lance Klusener-allan Donald mix-up on the final ball against Australia in the 1999 semi-finals. It remains the frame that best captures the near misses of world cricket's cursed team.
Unlike many others, South Africa as a nation acknowledges its seemingly incurable ailment
of freezing at the finish. The country has produced a well-received book by writer Luke Alfred, who stares the problem right in the eye with its title, Art of Losing – Why the Proteas choke
at the cricket World Cup. It talks about the “macho culture” that is prevalent in South Africa sports and its “strong and silent” players.
Klusener, aka Zulu, epitomises South Africa's tough guy image. Alfred mentions Zulu's pet phrase. “You’ve got to stay on your lily,” the all-rounder would often say. The writer explains: “By which he meant that you